Yahoo Announces $1.1 Billion Acquisition of Blogging Site Tumblr

Yahoo!’s deal for Tumblr has become official after the rumor mill started up last Thursday. However, many Tumblr fans are concerned what this means for Tumblr, and in fact some 72,000 blog posts defected to WordPress the hour that the acquisition was announced. Even though WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg says that users are “reading too much into import numbers,” fans of both WordPress and Tumblr are skeptical of Tumblr’s new owner.

However, Yahoo has already begun to answer some of the concerns surrounding the acquisition. The company announced that Tumblr will be independently operated and will remain a completely separate business with very little integration of the two companies. Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Mayer decided to use the website herself to try and relieve panicked fans that nothing is going to change anytime soon, although she does plan to make both platforms stronger with the support of the other.

“In terms of working together, Tumblr can deploy Yahoo!’s personalization technology and search infrastructure to help its users discover creators, bloggers, and content they’ll love. In turn, Tumblr brings 50 billion blog posts (and 75 million more arriving each day) to Yahoo!’s media network and search experiences. The two companies will also work together to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance user experience,” she wrote in her personal Tumblr blog, which can be read in full here.

Mayer compared this new acquisition to Google’s purchase of YouTube or eBay’s purchase of PayPal and said that these were combinations that users have been blissfully unaware of. She plans to do the same with Tumblr.

While Tumblr will likely stay the way it is, Mayer also made a point to say that Yahoo! will monetize Tumblr – but only in a way that will be beneficial to the user experience.

Though Tumblr is Yahoo’s largest purchase yet, Mayer assures it isn’t the last, nor the most powerful.